Madame Bovary’s Ovaries : A Darwinian Look at Literature

Now this might seem a tad trite, but I heard an interview on CBC this morning with the David and Nanelle Barash, the authors of Madame Bovary’s Ovaries : A Darwinian Look at Literature, a book that uses evolution as a lens for reading literature.

On preview, I thought this was a silly idea, but it seems that what they have done is to review the western literary canon and note how prevalent Darwinian ideas have been over time. This, the authors claims is simply evidence that the best and most enduring pieces of literature come from very accurate observations of nature. Evolution is all around us and informs many of our behaviours and so why wouldn’t the authors of the western canon not encode this awareness in their works?

The Barashs are not saying that authors from Virgil to Mark Twain were all about a literary program of encoding the idea of evolution in everything they wrote. Far from it. They are saying that the best writers can really see what’s going on, and if you read literature with an eye to this, then you will see it too.

This led me to two thoughts. First I wondered what other lenses people use to look at literature. How do you read? I read novels only occasionally and my eye is tuned to the hero’s journey and the moments of transformation within people, where they come into their own power. What are yours?

My second thought was somewhat more profound. If it true that Darwinian ideas permeate our best cultural products, even those that predate Darwin, could a saturation in such a culture have somehow tuned Darwin’s eyes to pick out the patterns in nature that eventually became his theory of evolution? I guess I see this as an integral question: science is so preoccupied with observing and measuring the world, are not the inter-subjective roots of theory not the encoded lessons that are transmitted through a culture’s stories? This is why stories are so important it seems to me. Tell stories and let listeners discern the patterns that lead to renewed observations of the world, informed both by observation and interpretation. I wonder what the Barashs would think of this question?

It certainly leads support to the idea that a balance of the arts, literature and science might create the conditions for profound innovation. A call for a little less specialization and a little more widening and deepening of engagement with the world.